What a difference a week makes. Last Tuesday, the markets retreated sharply and now, 5 trading days later, decent economic news, sliding oil prices and hopes of a quick Libyan resolution pushed the major indexes higher. Providing the necessary ammunition to reverse yesterday’s mid-day sell off were decent reports on consumer spending and manufacturing. Adding to the bullish mood were …
Word Of The Day: Contango
One of the terms you hear frequently when reading about commodity ETFs, is the word “contango.” To enhance your understanding of what it means and how it affects ETFs, here are some highlights from “Contango and ETFs: What It Is, What You Can Do About It:” Investors love commodity exchange traded funds (ETFs), and with good reason. Aside from the …
Sunday Musings: Looking Ahead To The Next Crash
While I don’t agree very often with Paul Farrell, he did have some interesting thoughts in “Market Crash 2011: It will hit by Christmas.” Here are a few highlights: Our brains never learned 2008’s lessons, will fail again in 2011 Remember, we can’t help it. Our brains are defective, biased, manipulated by unseen forces 93% of the time. So blame …
Reader Q+A: Bond Talk
Several readers have emailed wanting me to talk about bond funds/ETFs in this current market environment. Here’s one request: Would you please share your thoughts on investing in bond funds/ETFs? Several articles talk about the possibility of raising interest rates resulting in a drop in bond prices. Would you recommend keeping the bond portion of the portfolio in money market …
No Load Fund/ETF Tracker updated through 2/24/2011
My latest No Load Fund/ETF Tracker has been posted at: http://www.successful-investment.com/newsletter-archive.php The unrest in Libya took a toll on the markets with major indexes declining 2% for the week. Our Trend Tracking Index (TTI) for domestic funds/ETFs has moved above its trend line (red) by +5.58% (last week +6.01%) and remains in bullish mode.
Extending The Slide
As was to be expected, the markets continued to face some headwinds yesterday in the form of HP’s poor quarterly results and continuing civil unrest in Libya. The day could have been a lot worse, but the S&P; 500 found support mid-day at the psychologically important 1,300 level, rebounded and managed to cut into its losses. Crude oil was the …